


lie here with me

by betoning



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M, Moonlight, No Smut, Sharing a Bed, Sunlight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-24 00:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10730412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betoning/pseuds/betoning
Summary: The four nights they fall asleep, and the one night confessions fall out.





	lie here with me

**Author's Note:**

> This is less fic and more… random scenes shoved together without the important bits in-between, and will probably just come across as confusing and incomplete to anyone who reads it, because my writing has a tendency to be just that. I wanted to write about bed (+ couch) sharing, though, so I guess this is first and foremost for me. If you happen to like it, though, I’m beyond happy. 
> 
> Please remember that this is a work of fiction.

I

Sebastian comes out of the guest room with his bag zipped up; round around clothes and essentials. The sight makes Chris’s heart plummet – leaves a void in its absence that hungers for substance. For assurance. For a promise to stay that will make him whole again.

Sebastian’s only been here for twenty-seven hours. He came into this very room with the same bag and similar, comfortable clothes on yesterday, and flashed a brighter version of the same smile that is tugging at the corners of that captivating mouth now. Here, in the flesh, but for a terrifyingly short amount of time, and Chris doesn’t understand what’s about to happen. Can’t find a reasonable excuse for why the world is about to snatch Sebastian away from him so soon now that they’re finally in the same place again.

Dodger’s expressing that same, urgent confusion through sad noises pressed to Sebastian’s calf; a nose against worn sweatpants, sniffing pleas into the fabric. He did a similar thing last night – padded confliction into the floor between Chris’s bedroom and the guest room across the hall, uncertain of where to sleep for the first time since he got settled in this house. Sebastian gave him a murmured, melodic goodnight, then, and forgot to put an edge to his voice when he aimed it back at Chris for a similar parting over spreading worry beneath socks and body heat. Sounded soft and fond with residue adoration before he gave a precious wave and eased into his room for the night.

He left the door open, and Chris did the same, and it took Dodger a while before he settled between the two. An off-beat rhythm of paws to drum out that confliction even as lights went out and the distance felt as big as the country that usually separates Chris from his heart.

The void is a black hole in his chest now, gaping, eating the leftover sparks in his eyes as Sebastian drops that bag on a cushion. The fading embers must be obvious – are never anything but bright with happiness when Sebastian is near, so the fact that Sebastian’s arching a curious eyebrow in response to it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“Anthony’s back’s been bothering him, right?” Sebastian ponders aloud. “He said – and so I thought. I mean, I’ll take the couch. It’s a nice couch.”

Chris has been distracted for twenty-seven hours. Too happy to have Sebastian here to think about plans and arrangements, but Mackie _is_ coming, and unlike Chris, Sebastian _has_ thought about it. Is standing in front of Chris and the couch he dubbed nice in a subtle coronation, and he’s so kind. Warm. Considerate in his nature.

Chris blurts an incredulous, “ _No_.”

The outburst, despite it being one of many that Chris will let out today, makes Sebastian look taken aback. Startled. Caught in the headlights of Chris’s desperation.

Chris flails a hand out, lets it tremble back to his lap, and adds, “No, you can’t – I won’t let you do that. You’re—“

A guest. But more than that; kind, beautiful, _Sebastian_.

“You can take my bed,” Chris finishes, aware that he missed out on half of the things he meant to say. That nothing can possibly make sense. “I’ll sleep out here.”

Sebastian, unsurprisingly, levels him with a perfectly arched eyebrow over an unimpressed gaze, and crosses his arms over his chest. His muscles are smaller now, though no less admirable in their shapes; the way they fill out shirts better than they used to do before the Captain America circus started. He’s Bucky Barnes, now. Muscle, and the only gaze in the fictional world that can possibly compete with the stubborn blue of Steve Rogers.

The gaze is as impressive here, in the real world, matched against Chris’s. Pierces just as sharply and sends shivers through hollowed bones, but doesn’t quite manage to tremble Chris’s eyes closed. The challenge is there, established in blue on blue in a contact over Dodger’s continuous sniffing, until icy blue melts a little – until it’s got mirrored sparkles from an amused heaven in it.

“ _Fine_ ,” Sebastian huffs, averting eyes and half of his attention to the dog as he crouches. The joints in his knees are quiet, just like the rest of him. “We’ll just have to share, then.”

Chris, irrationally and stupidly, feels a twinge of jealousy tugging at that pile of his plummeting heart; reeling it back up to the hole in his chest that is ready to swallow it up. He watches Sebastian’s hand, those elegant fingers and the way they bend softly behind Dodger’s ear, scratching comfort into hair. Watches the delight that sits in the corners of Sebastian’s mouth and everywhere in his eyes as the dog enthusiastically loves him back. The jealousy thrives.

“Do you have a preferred side of the bed?” Sebastian asks next, unaware of the turmoil inside of Chris. He’s gazing up with curiously amused eyes – a sparkling gaze from under lengthy eyelashes that doesn’t seem to expect a serious answer.

Everything’s falling into place in Chris’s mind, though; the zipped up bag and Sebastian’s suggestion, however playful it was when he said it. The puzzle is soft and sits nicely in his mind along with the image before him, and his heart is so relieved that it fails to connect with his mind and mouth.

“Oh,” comes out, because Sebastian will have to _share_. Share with _Chris_. “Right?”

Sebastian’s hand halts – gets a wet nose pressed to its palm that he doesn’t seem entirely aware of as he blinks up at Chris, eyelashes sweeping delicately. There’s still a shimmer in those eyes, though. Something fainter, but just as beautiful where it enhances pleasant surprise in his echoing, “Right.”

;

Sleep is cautious that night, blurring the edges of Chris’s consciousness but keeping the centre of it clear. He’s too aware of his breathing, too aware of _Sebastian’s_ breathing, too aware of fucking _everything_ , and subsequently also aware of the risk of fucking everything _up_.

A bit more to drink would have been a good idea, now that he’s thinking back on it. Another beer with the pizza they ate once Mackie finally arrived, or another few mouthfuls of whiskey afterwards – anything to make the blood in his ears rush louder and brush away at the lovely sound of Sebastian’s gentle breathing. He can feel every movement of that delicate cage of bones – the subtle shift of the mattress and faraway brush of fabrics where lungs are expanding with the air of Chris’s bedroom.

Sebastian. Alive, and here to breathe it in.

The serenity feels shiny and new – like suppressed excitement in his stomach as he listens to the quiet noises. Even Dodger’s fast asleep, seemingly pleased to have them both in the same room tonight, with no regards for the guest room now that Mackie has closed the door around it.

Chris’s whole heart is here, gathered in pieces that are coming together, and sleep is cautious to take that process away from him – this moment where he gets to cherish what is fleetingly his.

He’s used to Sebastian, after so many years of them working side by side. Used to Sebastian’s weight, with and without Bucky Barnes muscle. Used to Sebastian’s touches and his unwavering attention whenever Chris speaks – to the way _everything_ about Sebastian feels in relation to himself. _He’s used to it all_ , but somehow none of it feels familiar, now. Feels a thousand times better and a thousand times scarier to have, here, with that weight resting upon his own mattress, a mere inch away.

So he’s aware of the breathing, of the movement, of the warm heart and the cold fingertips that aren’t his to hold. Aware of it all where he takes it in, feels it and savours it to bone and muscle for as long as he gets to keep it, and sleep doesn’t give in until dawn.

 

II

The sunset is taunting Chris. There’s food in his belly and a lingering taste of the pasta on his tongue, and the sunset is snorting out shades of orange. Making fun of the sated exhaustion that makes his bones feel heavy to carry around, his muscles worn from the effort of guarding his overflowing heart all day.

He shakes his head over spotless countertops, wiping a towel across marble and streaks of sunshine, then closing up the dishwasher around pots and plates that he had to pry out of Sebastian’s hands with insistent words and the sort of pleading look he’s stolen from his dog.

Sebastian’s kindness is larger than life itself – it surpasses anything that the world has to offer through offers of home-cooked meals and abashed smiles served as side dishes. Peals of laughter laid out between them upon Chris’s kitchen table in reaction to stupid tales of a reckless boy from Boston. A desire to be helpful displayed in a try to clean dishes, after, as though the explosion of flavours over Chris’s tongue and his very company wasn’t more than Chris could ever hope to get from him. Sebastian. Here, still, to breathe in.

Chris laughs right along with the sun, then, bright and astonished over undeniable facts as he sets the towel aside and grips the counter. Sebastian, here in his house, cooking them dinner and being amazing in his own skin, in his own oblivious nature, blessing the rooms with his compassion. It’s worth all the sleepless nights in the world. Is worth standing in the kitchen with a sunset taunting his tiredness, because it means that he has something to get to. Something to gravitate towards that isn’t just the memory of what laughter sounds like when it’s embedded in Sebastian’s voice, but the _real thing_ ringing out through the house.

“ _Chris_ ,” dancing joyfully over wooden floors, “he just got out of the limo!”

Chris tilts his chin up – aims an amicable grin at the horizon before he snatches a bag of Doritos from the island and follows the melody of Sebastian’s voice into his bedroom.

The sun is in here, too, setting over hills and valleys of flesh and bone where Sebastian is sprawled out comfortably on the bed. An orange glow upon soft fabrics of sweatpants and t-shirt, and over devious skin that is peeking out in the sliver between hem and waistband. It’s art. The most beautiful scene Chris has ever seen, and he’s seen _a lot_ of Sebastian over the years.

His lungs feel inadequate – entirely incapable of breathing all of that in – and he’s simply standing on his own, barely-there threshold between hallway and bedroom, failing to find his footing when the scene blossoms even further.

Sebastian laughs, seemingly startled by his own amusement where it slips out from between his soft lips. His eyebrows are raised over sparkling eyes, and his gaze shivers with crackling fondness where it studies the screen of his phone for a moment, two, before it rises to lock with Chris’s.

“He _stumbled_ ,” he breathes out with a shade of disbelief staining his tone that isn’t showing in his eyes, unsurprised by Chris’s presence in the room. “He tripped over the _carpet_.”

It’s not cruel, it’s affectionate. It’s the kind of unconditional love that Chris has known all his life, rooted deep in exchanges with siblings that took it as well as they dished it out. Sebastian hasn’t had that. Sebastian has been alone with his mother, alone in a new country, and has guided his own way through social constructs until he finally landed in the Marvel-family, and now he’s lying on Chris’s bed with laughter in eyes and chest, brimming with gleeful affection as though it’s second nature to tease like this.

“He _didn’t_ ,” Chris finds himself gasping, thrilled at the prospect and charmed by the amusement. He lunges forward, with palms and knees heaving him up towards the source of Sebastian’s joy while Dodger taps excited paws over the floor. “Oh, _please_ tell me he did.”

Sebastian’s nodding, shifting weight to accommodate the addition of Chris’s body by his side. His leg stretches out along the length of Chris’s; his hand tilts the phone for Chris to see. “His face – you should have seen his _face_.”

On the screen, Anthony Mackie is caught on a livestream of the red carpet event for his latest movie, serving gestures as wide as his eyes to an interviewer hidden behind a camera. He’s unashamed, offering pieces of himself and turning his own miscalculations into jokes that the entire world gets to be a part of.

“Did he blame some poor, hardworking mat-supervisor?” Chris wonders, arching an eyebrow high enough that his entire head tilts with it and leans into Sebastian’s shoulder. “Claim that they should do a better job when Hollywood’s finest is present?”

Sebastian snorts, moving under Chris’s weight, but not away from it. “No, he said he did it on purpose, to _entertain_.”

The sarcasm is undeniable. Wonderful. Golden and in tune with the stray bits of sunshine on the sky and in the glass of the windows. Chris’s whole chest feels warm, graced with the presence of unguarded humour and Sebastian’s steady heartbeat a mere collarbone away. He laughs through it, weightless, with the friction of his beard against Sebastian’s t-shirt as his only anchor.

“They better show it again.”

“It’ll be on YouTube before you know it,” Sebastian assures. He has laughter in his voice, still. The entire sun on his side and in his veins.

“I’m never gonna let him hear the end of this.”

Sebastian turns the phone down towards his stomach; his head to the side where his breath can play gently over Chris’s hair. “We could put it on a loop. Have it playing on the TV when he gets back in tonight, bring his massive ego back to Earth.”

It’s worn-in banter and pieces of childish excitement lighting the room up where shadows were about to form, and Chris looks at Sebastian’s throat; the bobbing of an Adam’s apple and the faint spread of stubble. Skin holding all of Sebastian’s layers together for Chris to admire in silence. In deafening curiosity. In a soft proclamation of, “You’re _amazing_.”

It’s already too late to reel it back in. It’s _there_ , out in the open and spreading in fabrics and floorboards – in the form of dread in his own veins and bashful joy in the lines of Sebastian’s face. A soft pink landing upon Sebastian’s cheeks to immediately mute the unnecessary worry inside of Chris while simultaneously contending with the colours outside. Chris wonders if the soft reaction to praise will ever morph into something else, or if Sebastian always will make his heart feel too small and too large at the same time when he hands it over with his uncontrollable truths.

;

He wakes up with an apology ready on the tip of his tongue, set to leap off before he’s even opened his eyes, because he can tell that there’s darkness beyond his closed lids. That there’s no flickering of light playing out upon fabrics and walls to prove that the movie they put on earlier is still rolling. The lack of rest from the night before caught up with him and made him fall asleep in Sebastian’s company, and he feels shame burning all along his body now. Heat prickling beneath skin and inside of lungs as he fails to gulp down rationality. _He fell asleep_. Abandoned Sebastian in his own home. Is a lousy host and friend.

He’s _sorry_ – it’s right there upon his tongue and curling over his lips, but it falls dead when he opens his eyes, and his sheets seems to bunch up beneath him in disapproval of what he’s done. They’re white in the moonlight that sneaks in from the window, and as uncomfortable to lie on as his startling realization as he blinks at the magical being next to him on the bed.

Sebastian’s still there, hasn’t abandoned him, only he _has_. _Must_ have, because the blanket from the back of Chris’s couch hadn’t migrated to the bedroom before Chris drifted off, and unless it’s grown threaded wings and flown in the background of Chris’s dreams, Sebastian must have gone out to get it. He’s _come back_ , but he’s also gone away in the first place, searching for a warmth and protection that Chris hasn’t been able to give him.

Chris curls an agreeing fist into the judgemental fabric beneath him, in dubious moonlight that pools around his waist along with the duvet when he pushes himself into a sitting position. The duvet – _all of it_ – because he’s hogged it in his sleep. Has deprived Sebastian of warmth and comfort when all he’s ever wanted is to give the man the world. Give it in a romantic sense, because he’s deeply aware and insanely proud over the fact that Sebastian can grab the entire world on his own and conquer it with kindness and talent. That Sebastian is the kind of person to tuck a tired friend beneath a duvet while he leaves himself out in the cold, and – _fuck_.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, it _is_ cold. Chris keeps the temperature low in his house, because he likes curling up with pillows and blankets and let the comfort consume him, but he _doesn’t_ like how Sebastian’s got the wingless blanket tucked up tight beneath his chin as though the comfort within his cocoon has lost the battle. The moonlight enhances long eyelashes against soft skin; the slight pout of lips that move soundlessly with dream-induced activity.

Sebastian was cold, but ever so considerate, and Chris can imagine how he must have shuffled out of the room to grab the blanket from the living room. Imagines how that lean body might have attracted door frames and the corner of the coffee table during its dark trek through the house, because the entire universe always seems to reach out for a touch of Sebastian when he walks by. Clumsiness and inanimate objects falling in love to leave purple imprints upon skin that Chris has had to force himself not to cover with kisses too many times to count.

He’s too protective of what isn’t even his, but evidently not while he sleeps.

Sebastian chose to leave instead of tugging at a corner of the duvet and claiming his spot beneath it. Might have thought, under cover of night and its darkness, that Chris didn’t want him in his bed. This bed with its sheets that still curl with disdain under Chris’s weight; rippling like sand that has been pushed about by waves of selfishness. But he _came back_ , Chris tries to convince his own mind and sheet. Sebastian, polite and tentative yet ruthless in the way he fills up Chris’s entire heart, grabbed the blanket and came back when he could have just shoved Chris off the bed, and now he’s curled up in shades of blue and moonlight, in Chris’s bed and line of sight.

 _Here_ , still, to breathe right in.

Chris smooths the sheet out beneath him, then the duvet over Sebastian’s body next to him on the bed. The shame’s still prickling beneath his skin, and in eyelids that refuse to shut against the sight before him once more. He wonders, briefly, if the moon will tell the sunrise about this. If he’ll get a lecture on manners instead of gentle shades of mockery tomorrow evening. Worries, in the wait for the sky to crack with colours, that Sebastian might not want to stay another night, because his heart doesn’t know how to be rational. It’s not his to control.

 

III

The sunset doesn’t get to him. They’re in a meeting with Marvel-people and fellow actors for hours, talking future storylines and throwing digs at Mackie about his red carpet-elegance over too-many cups of coffee until the sun is a mere memory and LA is gleaming with city lights once more.

Coffee turns into alcohol in someone’s hotel bar, and before Chris knows it the world is swaying along with his inebriation as a car takes them back to his place. Sebastian, Mackie and himself: still splintering with peals of laughter in a way that makes him feel home already. Nestled in friendships – in mutual affection and the knowledge that he’s keeping Sebastian warm, now, in the jacket that he handed over on the sidewalk outside of the hotel.

Sebastian looks good in it, in fabric and laughter and Chris’s scent in the backseat of this car, shaking his head along with his own disbelieving chuckles as Mackie chatters on. Chris slides in comments where they seem necessary – fond jabs of reality pressed in-between Mackie’s tales because he loves these people. Wants to see them happy and at ease, whiskey-drunk and settled on their way to a place where they know that they’ll be safe.

Chris’s house, a fort in the distance, and himself trying to be a knight on the way there. He has nothing on Sebastian’s sarcastic sidenotes, though. He feels himself keeling over his own lap, vulnerable to Sebastian’s wit. He’d be useless in a battle, falling apart in awestruck pieces.

Sebastian can fend for himself, anyway. Can grab blankets from the grasp of a late night, and kneel in the hallway of Chris’s home to greet a dog that adores him. Chris stands with the front door to his back, watching it all unfold at his feet. Sebastian with gentle fingers running across Dodger’s head while equally gentle greetings of what a good puppy he is soar right over it.  Dodger’s paws are excited against the carpet; Chris’s heart is falling in his chest. Down and in love, over and over.

Anthony is already in the living room, muttering exaggerated nonsense about how he doesn’t need a dog’s approval anyway, but Chris can detect the fondness – the understanding that echoes in his own chest at the realization that the entire wold is charmed by Sebastian. That it’s okay to come second after him.

He’s a mess of a knight still, though. Tries to gather pieces of his armour and cover up his truth by saying, “Replaced me, have you, Dodger? I see how it is.”

He drags fingers over Sebastian’s shoulder when he passes, against the faux leather of that familiar jacket and through the sound of an excited whine from Dodger at the realization that Chris is back, too. That the dog’s entire universe is closing in safely around him again, with pieces falling into place. His tail waggles, and he pants out demands of attention as he rushes after Chris into the living room – noses eagerly at Chris’s knee when the man has sat down on the couch and is looking at him with drunken amusement and affection.

“ _Oh_ , did you remember me now?” he asks, flexing fingers behind the pup’s ear. “I might not be shiny and new but I _feed_ you, you know. Take you out for walks. Bathe you when you roll around in the mud outside.”

The room around him expands – ripples to life with the movement of the couch as Sebastian sinks down on it and alerts him that the night’s still happening. That alcohol and the love he carries for his dog hasn’t erased everything else. He swallows down remaining words, rubbing more attention against Dodger’s head while he tries not to let his own explode with heat assembled by whiskey and slight embarrassment. Looks up at Sebastian and feels himself sag with familiar comfort at the look of fondness that he is met with.

“He loves you,” Sebastian comments. It sounds heavy. Sounds right, whether there’s more beneath the surface of it or not. Has a drunken sidenote of, “I’m _not_ shiny.”

“You are!” slips out of Chris, full of offence. “You… _glint_.”

He does, all the time. In front of cameras and behind scenes and on Chris’s couch, in Chris’s line of sight and probably out of it, too. Bright and beautiful, charming the sun itself and tearing the air right out of Chris’s lungs when he aims a bashful grin down at his own lap. _Blinding_.

Chris is staring. He’s aware, through inebriated fog and enchantment. He’s watching the soft blush upon Sebastian’s cheeks and the gentle peeling of Chris’s jacket off of muscular shoulders; the folding of that same jacket over the arm of the couch while a hand lingers upon it.

The microwave dings, tearing him out of his bubble before he says something stupid, and then Mackie is coming back into the room with a stolen Tupperware container of leftovers from yesterday. Sebastian’s culinary skills being devoured in superhero speed as Chris feels something churn in his stomach – pieces disappearing before Sebastian’s even gone.

He presses the nearest remote – clicks himself to yesterday’s loop of Mackie stumbling as a retort and ends up swelling with pride as Sebastian starts to laugh out his approval. He burrows down against the cushions, into laughter and friendly banter, at home in the way they all fit in here. Sebastian with unguarded glee on his furniture; Mackie eating the contents of his fridge while opening up for Dodger to slip out in the backyard.

“You’re both assholes,” is then proclaimed to the couch, before Mackie’s muttering away down the hall and into the guest room, container still in hand.

Sebastian’s still chuckling softly, radiating a warmth that sinks right into Chris’s lungs and makes him breathe properly again. He’s looking at Chris now, with eyes that are wide with something that Chris has seen a thousand times before and still haven’t been able to name. Something that’s made his bones feel comfortable inside his body since the day they first met.

“Don’t get cold,” Chris blurts – an inexplicable desperation fighting its way out of his mouth without regards for what it’ll cause. Worry at seeing the open door behind Sebastian – the jacket discarded and the memories of last night burned deep into the insides of his eyelids.

Sebastian tilts his head in response, smiling as softly as ever, as though he can make sense of anything Chris says – can sense any underlying emotion and validate it even when Chris can’t. “Would you even let me?”

He looks a bit like he did when this all started, when he had Dodger nosing at his palm and was crouched down in front of this very sofa, expecting Chris to go along with a joke instead of inviting him into his bed. Looks soft and tired and comfortable where he’s grinning, as though he’s waiting for a joke once more.

Chris doesn’t – _can’t_ – give him that. Can’t get anything past his lips but a truthful, “No. Not again.”

;

“I have a camera roll full of blackmailing material, and I want breakfast,” is what Chris wakes up to in the morning. The sunlight is back, finally, taunting him with orange brightness beyond eyelids that feel too fragile in the face of it. He’s settled, though. Less headache and more contentment as he flexes toes against the arm of the couch and sinks further into the cushions below additional warm weight.

Sebastian, _still here_ and without a doubt the best thing Chris has ever woken up to, even with Mackie’s delight dancing along with the sunshine in the room and rousing them both from sleep.

Chris’s entire left side is covered with male heat and soft skin, with hair and breath and muscles moving sleepily in the ticking morning. Moving, but not away. Stirring, humming, and nudging even closer as though Sebastian’s seeking the protection – the warmth that counters the chill from the door that they never closed to the backyard.

Chris flicks off the room without care for where the target of the sentiment is, ignoring the laughter that it earns him in favour of burying that same hand in Sebastian’s hair, against the nape of that gentle neck where a shiver loosens and moves like an earthquake through his own body. Sebastian hums against his collarbone: an aftershock of contentment. The morning would be blissful without Mackie’s need for revenge after carpet-induced mockery.

“Breakfast, guys, come on!” he’s urging them on, backed up by Dodger’s happy panting. “I haven’t got all day, you can cuddle when I’ve left for the airport.”

Those are the fateful words that tear the world apart, shifting Sebastian up and away from Chris’s greedy fingers and heart. He cracks an eye open just in time to see Sebastian ducking his head, hiding a smile against his clavicle with his eyes still closed against morning light and embarrassment.

Blissful, yes. All of it, until Sebastian slips into the kitchen and all that’s left is Chris’s toes against couch and jacket, chilling under uninvited Los Angeles air and Mackie’s smug gaze.

“A click away and I’ll be making _Cap’s gotten a boyfriend_ a trend within minutes,” he says under waggling eyebrows, without as much as a fragment of a threat in his voice. It’s not an actual idea – not something he would ever do, but he knows how to have fun with it. Knows how to nudge and grin until Chris feels like his cheeks are burning, betraying his emotions.

“You _tripped_ on a live stream that _millions_ of people watched,” he says as a lousy comeback, with the same lack of threat. A reminder of an embarrassment for someone who rarely gets embarrassed, while Chris himself stumbles to his feet and almost walks right into the kitchen island.

Blissful, but _unfair_.

“I,” he says, ever so eloquent. “Help?”

Sebastian, the cause of a heart stopping and thoughts failing, tilts his head up from the stove with a smile ready on his face, amusement radiating off of him with the sun as a backdrop where he’s stood in front of the window. “Are you asking or offering?”

He’s preforming a duet with the same sunlight that was taunting Chris the other day, stood in beams of it that enhance the cut of his jaw and the blue of his eyes; the ease of which he’s standing in Chris’s kitchen, doing magical things with pots that Chris hasn’t touched since he moved in. Making a home of it.

“You! Help you. _Offering_ ,” Chris forces out, stumbling over syllables and his heart, hesitant as he toes himself forward. “Not that you need it, you’re a magician. I do. Clearly can’t speak.”

Sebastian’s smile softens even further, fondness underlying it as he scrambles eggs in a pan. “Coffee could help you with that?”

He’s prepared a cup – the one he must have noticed that Chris likes to use the most. An Iron Man one, matching the Cap one stood near Sebastian’s free hand on the countertop. A shade of blue that Chris usually keeps in the back of the cupboard in a try not to make his profession a topic of conversation when he has people over.

“ _Magician_ ,” Chris reinforces as he accepts the potion of coffee and milk, just the way he prefers it.

Sebastian outdoes the sun. Chris stares, unabashed. In the background, Mackie’s muttering about how the world _already_ _knows_ , but Chris is watching it, and he doesn’t think that it does. Doesn’t think that it has the slightest idea.

 

IIII

Chris closes the door to the backyard, finally. Thumbs the temperature up a few degrees, and turns off lights on his way to the bedroom. It’s silent now that Anthony’s gone, but it’s not empty. It’s full of life and warmth and a happiness that Chris hasn’t wrapped around himself quite like this in years: something he gets to keep for another night, because Sebastian’s still here. Still in his house, in his bedroom, just about falling off the bed where he’s reaching below it to scratch love against Dodger’s side.

He has to stop on the threshold once again, admiring the view and its casual nature. His dog. The love of his life. The lack of a discussion of whether or not Sebastian should take Mackie’s place in the guest room again. The moonlight is just as impressed with Sebastian’s presence as the sun always is, until Chris uses the curtains to shut it out and subsequently drags Sebastian’s lazy gaze to him with the noise.

Chris has a script waiting for him, neglected on the nightstand. Can hear Dodger make his way to his bed in the corner of the room. Grounds himself in these things as he slides in beneath the duvet and realizes that Sebastian’s folded the flightless blanket and left it at the foot of the bed – that he’s burrowed himself under the same duvet and looks like he absolutely belongs there.

The TV’s not on, nor is the light on Sebastian’s side of the bed. Chris considers it all while he gets himself settled; the soundless assurance of Sebastian’s breathing that still amazes him, the calm laying as an additional cover over the house even though they’ve lost a member.

“It’s quiet,” he concludes once more, aloud now, for Sebastian to hear.

Sebastian simply hums – has tilted his body around and is leaning in ever so gently to where the mattress is dipping under Chris’s weight. He looks tired. Soft. Always so soft to look at, ready to be admired and cared for. Chris has to tear his gaze away before he takes too much, lifting the stack of papers and eyeing the first page.

“A new movie?” Sebastian murmurs. Tilts even closer, almost as though he’s testing the limits, the lines that Chris may have drawn since this morning.

Chris hums out a confirmation, then he swoops his arm out where no lines will ever be present and lets Sebastian rest his head on his shoulder. An invitation to read, or to simply be. Something for his heart to selfishly devour because it might not get something like this ever again.

He’s not planning on acting much in the future, but he’ll still read the few scripts that his agent sends through. Will read them with interest, usually, when he hasn’t got long limbs and gentle breathing pressed to him to distract him. When he hasn’t got a beautiful mind wrapped up in beautiful features so close to him, so physically close to that heart of his that doesn’t know how to quit.

It beats blood out to greedy fingertips – makes his hand find its way back to Sebastian’s hair, the crown of his head, his temple, over everything it can touch to soothe the final bits of restless energy that are making Sebastian’s fingers move in circles against Chris’s side.

He wants to be an anchor. A calling, urging Sebastian to stay close if he wants to. An assurance that Sebastian is welcome, here, and that there’s always room in this house, this bed, this embrace. In Chris’s life, where blankets won’t be necessary because they both know, now, that Chris will keep Sebastian warm. That he’ll happily play the role of protective fabric for shivering bones if it’s what Sebastian needs.

 

I

Chris’s heart aches. They’ve been working out together all afternoon, running around the neighbourhood with Dodger at their feet before heading to the gym to spur each other on, but it’s his heart that has strained itself the most. It’s been going on for years, now, but the past days have been a constant reminder of what he can’t have and it’s starting to take its toll. It’s full to the brim with love and adoration, with casual touching and meaningful embraces of everything he wants to protect, and it’s a dull throb in his chest when he gets into bed. A heavy weight of realization that it’ll all end tomorrow.

He’s grumpy, he can admit that much to himself. Torn between his own devastation and the happiness that he feels for Sebastian, knowing that the phone call he’s having with his mother out in the kitchen will be a proper meeting again once he’s back in New York. He will put Sebastian before his own selfish needs in any situation, but is allowing himself this moment of solitude where he doesn’t have to put up a front of being okay with the impending distance between them, curling himself around the empty space on the bed.

There is a shift when Sebastian finally comes in, when he climbs into bed and only hesitates for a moment before he’s arranging himself under Chris’s arm. He’s cool to the touch – must have let Dodger out in the backyard a final time before he came in here. Chris imagines him out there, sat on the step with bare feet and a love for the night sky, but can’t imagine what they talked about; the moonlight and Sebastian. If it spilled his secrets, or if they created their own.

“Mom says hi,” Sebastian reveals. Not space-related secrets, but a gift all on its own, pressed close to Chris’s skin.

Chris says, “You’re cold.”

“You’re not.”

It’s no form of disagreement: Sebastian _is_ cold, and no attempt to joke will erase that fact. There’s just Chris’s hand, wide and worried over Sebastian’s arm, shoulder, wrist. A trek up and down over soft skin as he contemplates the man at his side, how readily he curled limbs and smile into Chris’s body and depended on him for protection. Protection against the cold – the catalyst of the shift.

“I can get the blanket from to couch again, turn the heat up more and –“

Sebastian shakes his head. His hair rubs softly against Chris’s shoulder, and his breath is warm against Chris’s skin when he snorts.

“Am I entertaining?” Chris asks. It comes out weak, lacking a protective tone to cover that he’s hurt. He _knows_ that he worries a lot about a lot of things, but he never thought that Sebastian would make fun of him for it.

“You’re wonderful,” Sebastian corrects. Then, quieter, he adds, “You’re all I need.”

He freezes in the next moment, under Chris’s fingers, as though he catches up with his own words, his own confession. Stills under a hand that doesn’t know whether it’s trembling on its own or surfing on the anxiety that seems to be exploding in Sebastian’s arm, in veins and nerves and heart.

Chris doesn’t know if those words mean what he wants them to mean, but he still breathes out, “All yours.”

“Don’t tease,” Sebastian whispers against Chris’s collarbone. Breathy. Broken, but with tentative hope in the shards of that voice. A trust in Chris keeping him close when anyone else would be rolling away from the threat of rejection.

Chris is in awe. In love. In disbelief, but tilting his chin down, tilting lips to Sebastian’s forehead and saying, “I’m not. _Sebastian_ , I’m – I love you, I’d never – the sun’s made fun of me for pining for you. I am. Yours. If you—“

“ _Yes_ ,” Sebastian insists, certain for a moment before he cracks under a wave of doubt and adds, “I love you. I want – If I can be, if you want me –“

“—I _do_ –“

“I want to be yours, too.”

The moon’s probably bursting into confetti out in the sky, alerting the sun of how the universe is changing, coming together, thrumming around the realization that Chris is allowed to stretch all the care in his heart around Sebastian, now. That he doesn’t have to hold back.

Chris shifts his arms. Nudges a knee in-between both of Sebastian’s and tilts him; gets him flat on his back where Chris can hover and gaze down with wonder in gaze and fingertips, cheered on by sheets beneath them that haven’t bunched up with disdain this time around.

Sebastian’s breath is warm, astonished with laughter where it seeps out between them, belated as though he’s only just realizing what’s happening. Chris loves that. Him. All of Sebastian’s reactions. Loves how Sebastian shines even without lamps or sun or moon there to enhance him, sparkling in the dark now and teasing Chris’s heart into an amazed rhythm.

He dips down. Leans in. Captures enticing lips with his own and nearly trembles apart at the initial touch, the softness of it and the chill of Sebastian’s fingers where they press to the back of his neck, holding him close.

“Don’t leave tomorrow,” he pleads. Can’t stand the thought of stretching out his heart that far.

Sebastian shakes his head – rubs their lips together in the process while a smile grows on his’. It tastes of mint. Of warmth. Of mischief that sparks from his mouth to his beautiful ankles when they hook themselves around the back of Chris’s knees and pulls him down.

It’s an answer. _The_ answer. The mellowing sunset of an assurance as Sebastian chuckles into the kiss.


End file.
